Two years ago, Landus launched its Innovation Connector to bring more technology to the farmer while improving efficiency and profitability.
On May 4, Landus along with DEFENSEWERX launched a new joint venture called Landwerx, which will enhance connections and opportunities for farmers with technology.
As outlined by Landus CEO Matt Carstens, Landwerx will provide three key benefits.
- “We are reversing the script,” Carstens says. “We’re addressing problems to find solutions—not taking solutions and trying to go find problems, which happens so often today.”
- Landwerx is a place where farmers can bring ideas to be protected with their intellectual property and help them build businesses from the ideas they’ve created.
- “This is about putting the farmer back in the center of innovation and get the ecosystem, resources and talent that are required to do that,” Carstens says.
Landwerx is the 12th and newest innovation hub Defensewerx has partnered on, and its Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Brad Chedister says the joint venture is built on the idea that agricultural production provides national security. Since 2012 Defensewerx has been built as an innovation ecosystem intermediary serving the leading national security, defense, and intelligence communities in the U.S.
“The coop of today is about the farmer and the challenges that need to be addressed and how we best address them,” Carstens says. “Landwerx gives the ability to access resources beyond agriculture and address problems that perhaps seemed a bridge too far for us than before.”
As examples, he shares healthcare and financing, which he thinks will have related announcements made in the near future.
“As for farther in the future, we have to think about how farmers get paid for their work and the value they create all the way through the supply chain to bring money back to the farm,” Carstens says. “This is solely about the farmer, giving power back to the farmer, and that’s the role of the co-op.”
Landwerx is a neutral platform designed for farmers to be the direct beneficiary of the large innovation ecosystem.
“It may surprise people, but there’s no direct big benefit to Landus in developing it, and that’s the way it should be,” Carstens says. “We have an obligation to solve problems for the farmer. And we think Landwerx will do that.”
Carstens and Chedister explain more in this video:
